ICEYE Announces Agreement with European Space Agency to Support Copernicus Emergency Services with Flood Insights

Leveraging the world’s largest synthetic aperture radar constellation, ICEYE will provide ESA with active flood hazard data before, during and after large-scale flood events.

Helsinki, FINLAND – May 23, 2022 – ICEYE, the global leader in satellite driven persistent monitoring and an expert in natural catastrophe solutions, today announced the start of a pilot activity with the European Space Agency (ESA) to support the Copernicus Emergency Management Services (CEMS) team with flood insights. Through the pilot, ICEYE will deliver critical flood impact information showing the extent and depth of flooding at the structure level to ESA and CEMS throughout 2022. The pilot will allow CEMS to evaluate ICEYE's flood insights and explore potential applications.

ICEYE owns the world's largest synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation and combines the data from its spaceborne sensors with multiple auxiliary information sources on the ground as well as hydrological datasets. The output is a precise representation of the peak of flooding extent and depth. ICEYE expects that the pilot can help CEMS foster improved understanding of the impacts of flooding in developed areas, in near real-time.

The pilot will focus on go-forward flood monitoring services and insights delivery following flood events, and will also provide ESA and CEMS access to select data for historical events through ICEYE’s analytic archive. This pilot marks the company’s third and largest pilot with ESA. Previous pilots involved volcanic eruption monitoring and sea-ice mapping.

“We are leaning into the important capabilities of our European commercial space partners and we view ICEYE as an important part of our transformational future at ESA,” says Simonetta Cheli, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes. “We are proud to build upon our existing work with ICEYE within the Copernicus programme and we look forward to continuing to work with them.”

“This pilot is a huge step toward establishing ICEYE as a key element in the evolution of CEMS Rapid Mapping & Risk/Recovery components, and we are now thrilled to build on our existing partnership with ESA to highlight our flood solutions,” says Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE. “ICEYE’s aim is to help users make informed, data-driven decisions to address time-critical challenges, especially in the sectors of insurance and natural catastrophe response and recovery which is an important focus area to accelerate our company’s growth.”

In October 2021, ICEYE became a Copernicus Contributing mission partner to the European Union’s Earth Observation programme. As part of the collaboration, Copernicus users began receiving access to ICEYE’s SAR imagery related to public safety, border control, security and maritime domain awareness.

The Copernicus Contributing Mission Activity, as part of the Copernicus Programme, is managed by the European Space Agency on-behalf of the European Commission. These entities are the primary users while other users, such as public authorities in Europe, can also benefit from the data.